Stray thoughts under partial quarantine

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I feel like, if it comes back, second wave or whatever, people are not gonna follow lockdown rules at all in the same way.

Definitely.

What's so frustrating is that we had that window of three or four weeks when we'd had a few cases here and it was already very clear from Italy - a nearby country we're on good terms with and could easily have exchanged accurate and truthful information with if we'd wanted to, unlike, perhaps, China and Iran - that this was a really fucking serious problem, and the government did fuck all. Now even if you were a complete psychopath and cared only for how it was going to affect the economy, with no regard for loss of life, you'd surely understand that the sooner a lockdown began, the sooner it could be lifted? And you don't need to be an epidemiologist to understand that acting promptly at the start might therefore 'cost' a few weeks but could 'save' months and months later on.
 

version

Well-known member
I ended up watching a section from The Animatrix the other day and it's been stuck in my head ever since. There's a sprinter attempting to break a world record, his body can't handle it and he refuses to accept it and essentially brute forces his way out of the matrix without even realising what it is.

He ends up breaking the record, but seemingly cripples himself in the process until something happens and he gets up out of his wheelchair and begins to levitate...

 

entertainment

Well-known member
Since the outbreak, extreme premature births have declined 90% in Denmark, health people pointing to reduced stress under lockdown as a factor.

(spread has been relatively contained and most of the personal economic consequences were mitigated by goverment here, that's why it's been mostly a relaxing time)
 

version

Well-known member
The China syndrome

“As I always said, even before the coronavirus, with all these new techniques of digital control, we’re approaching a new model. I can smell it in the air. You’re not openly controlled, you still appear to retain your personal freedoms, you order this and that food, you can do whatever you want in your own little isolated world, you can have your personal perversions. But in practice the control isn’t any less tight than in the Chinese model – maybe even more so. In China at least nobody has great democratic illusions, you know you’re tightly controlled by the party, the state apparatus and so on. The mechanisms of control in the West don’t work like that; I am very wary of the authorities’ cooperation with Google.”

Perhaps you could explain your concern, because as I understand it, you’re not just talking about surveillance and the infringement of privacy.

“I’m talking about what Naomi Klein calls the ‘Screen New Deal.’ The big technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which enjoy vast government support, will enable people to maintain Telexistence. You undergo a medical examination via the web, you do your job digitally from your apartment, your apartment becomes your world. I find this vision horrific.”

So those who see this change as an act of liberation are wrong?

“First, it’s class distinction at its purest. Maybe half the population, not even that, could live in this secluded way, but others will have to ensure that this digital machinery is functioning properly. Today, apart from the old working class, we have a ‘welfare working class,’ all those caregivers, educators, social workers, farmers. The dream of this program, the Screen New Deal, is that physically, at least, this class of caregivers disappears, they become as invisible as possible. Interaction with them will be increasingly reduced and be digital.”
 

version

Well-known member
Screen fatigue

In his book “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” Freud referred to an enigma that troubled him deeply: Soldiers who returned wounded from World War I were more successful in processing their traumatic experiences than those who came back without a scratch. The soldiers who were physically unscathed tended to have recurring dreams about the war’s horrors. In “Pandemic!,” Zizek takes a Lacanian approach and proposes that a distinction be made between reality – the social and material space we inhabit – and the real, “a spectral entity, invisible and for that very reason appearing as all-powerful.” According to Zizek, it is only when the real becomes part of our reality – for example, in the case of infection by the virus – that it becomes “something we can deal with.”

Accordingly, Zizek divides workers during the crisis into those who encounter the virus and its consequences as part of their daily reality – medical staff, welfare-service people, farmers, the food industry – and those who are secluded in their homes, for whom the epidemic remains in the realm of the Lacanian spectral and omnipresent. Yet, both groups are condemned to weariness: the essential workers because of their high-stress work and its dangers, and the people confined to their home because of the lassitude that engulfs those who observe the end of their familiar world, as it is projected from the screens.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i was in the pub last friday. apparently you have to make a reservation first in order to get in and when you do they appoint you a seat where you have to stay seated. outside the clouds started thundering and a monsoon like rain poured down. nobody could leave and everybody got so drunk so fast. it looked like an orgy.
 

luka

Well-known member
no booze. a tiny bit of exercise. one meal a day. stick to that regime and youll be fine.
 

luka

Well-known member
eating sugar full stop is pedo alert in my book. its like being really into disney films as a grown up.
 

luka

Well-known member
i havent seen it yet. its the cornerstone of your unified field theory of everything so i promised to watch it but not got round to it yet
 
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